


when it's dark out i'm gonna light a spark

by spacenarwhal



Series: second star to the right and straight on [6]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, F/M, Family Feels, Future Fic, Holidays, M/M, Parenthood, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-23 02:19:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14322411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacenarwhal/pseuds/spacenarwhal
Summary: For the children Endor Day is a day of celebration, a gathering of friends in the open field near their home, food and laughter and games, fireworks in the night sky. But Cassian still remembers the terror of saying farewell to Jyn before she deployed to Endor with Solo’s crew, her face still brittle with the cold rage she’d carried with her since they’d learned about the Empire’s second Death Star.





	when it's dark out i'm gonna light a spark

**Author's Note:**

> I'm having a lot of baby feels right now guys.

The last of the fireworks are still dripping along the horizon, trailing shimmering light like falling stars as they drop downward. Tomax has long since lost his battle with sleep, tired from a long day out, running after his sister and the other children gathered on the field. He’s safely burrowed in Jyn’s arms now, snoring peacefully, unbothered by the occasional whizzing pop of a stray firework or the murmur of their neighbors as they begin to gather their things and head for home.

Beside him Jyn is rocking slightly, Tomax held close as her eyes trace the night sky. The night breeze stirs the loose hair away from her face and she’s still wearing the chain of wild flowers Auren made for her, crushed and bruised though the petals themselves are after a long day of running after the children. She catches Cassian staring—she always seems to catch him staring, from the very first—and gives him a small smile, muted but honest. Cassian knows all too well the wearying weight of memory, the heavy press that days like today, even now, years removed from the war. 

For the children Endor Day is a day of celebration, a gathering of friends in the open field near their home, food and laughter and games, fireworks in the night sky. But Cassian still remembers the terror of saying farewell to Jyn before she deployed to Endor with Solo’s crew, her face still brittle with the cold rage she’d carried with her since they’d learned about the Empire’s second Death Star. 

(“Everything we did—” She chokes, like every word is a burr buried deep in her throat, “Everything my father did—for nothing—” Cassian drags in a deep breath, wishes it were steadier, wishes his heart would slow behind his ribs as he takes her shaking hands in his. “It wasn’t for nothing Jyn.” He swears, but the memory of sea-salt and that blinding light press up behind his eyes and it’s only years of wielding a blaster with a steady hand and a failing heart that keep his own hands from trembling.)

On his other side Auren sighs, leans more heavily against him. Her dark hair is wild, a snare of tangles that she’ll complain about tomorrow when it’s time to brush them out, her bare feet pale under the dimmed lanterns circling the field. Cassian looks around for her boots—it wouldn’t be the first time she forgets where she left them—and sees K-2SO standing at the perimeter of the field, near the tree where Cassian and Jyn had laid out their things when they first arrived this afternoon. Kay holds up Auren’s boots almost as though he can read Cassian’s mind, and Cassian nods back in thanks, gratitude welling up inside his chest. 

“Cass.” Jyn says softly, drawing Cassian’s gaze back. She meets his eye and nods down towards Tomax, tilts her head in a silent gesture. Cassian nods. 

Time to head home. 

Chirrut and Baze bid them good night before the fireworks began, Chirrut laughing good-naturedly about how the pleasure of fireworks was lost on Baze. “He only likes explosions when he’s the cause for them.” Chirrut had teased, winking at Tomax who began chanting ‘Baba boom!’ (Neither Jyn nor Cassian can fathom where Tomax learned that particular phrase, though they’re being to suspect Chirrut and Kay might be working together to keep it alive in their son’s limited vocabulary). 

“But Papa—” Auren says pleadingly, when they begin to move, Cassian taking Tomax from Jyn so that she can get up. Tomax stirs slightly in Cassian’s arms, a brief whine caught in his throat before his breathing evens again. He’s so different from Auren, who spent the majority of her infancy refusing to sleep. Jyn and he used to worry incessantly when he was born, would wake at random and checked to see that he was still breathing whenever he slept through the night without crying. 

If Cassian has learned anything in the last seven years of parenthood it is this: Fatherhood is made up of worrying. The same mind that could foresee and anticipate an enemy’s move and an informant’s motives is now capable of imagining everything that might happen to his family, from the mundane to the terrible. He’d never known how many things there were for children to put in their mouths or how sharp the corners of a table could be until a toddler ran into them.

_If General Draven could see me now,_ Cassian thinks to himself, mind already beginning to leap through the acrobatics required to pacify a sleepy girl whose inherited her mother’s iron will. “Time to sleep in your own bed, changita.” Cassian says gently. “Go help Kay put everything away. You know how forgetful he is.” Cassian adds, nudging Auren lightly with his elbow. 

Auren huffs lightly under her breath. “I’m telling him you said that.” She says, but she scrambles to her feet, weaves through the thinning crowd back towards Kaytoo. 

“I’ll take him.” Jyn says, reaching for Tomax again and Cassian lets her take him, rises to his own feet once she’s settled Tomax against her chest. He stretches his limbs once he’s standing, hours of sitting on the ground in a single position leaving his back tight and his legs sore. He’ll probably feel it worse tomorrow. “The wonders of old age, Captain.” Chirrut will probably commiserate and Cassian grins at the thought, reaches for the old blanket they were sitting on, shaking it out before he folds it. 

“Ready?” Jyn asks, waiting for him, and Cassian nods, steps close enough to her to drop a kiss against her temple. Her hair smells like the green field grass and the floral scent of wild flowers, it whispers over Cassian’s knuckles when he moves it behind her ear. Jyn tips her face closer, brushes her lips against the corner of his mouth. 

“Papa, Kay says it’s more efficient if you put the blanket in the basket.” Auren says a touch too loudly, ambling towards them, still barefoot. She swallows some of the syllables in _efficient_ , snaps down too hard on the final consonant in her attempt to replicate Kaytoo’s measured tone. Of all the surprises life after the war had in store for Cassian, the greatest by far is how well Kay took to it. Cassian knows that even at his cockiest, the seventeen year old boy who decided to reprogram an Imperial droid would never have imagined that same droid explaining constellations to a curious six year old or allowing a two year old to climb his long limbs. Things Cassian would have never thought to ask Kay to do and yet finds him doing regardless.

Cassian passes off the blanket, almost reminds Auren to put on her boots but stops himself. She’s in need of a bath as it is, a bit more dirt won’t hurt her. 

“Do you ever worry she’s going to grow up calculating annoying odds?” Jyn asks wryly, shifting Tomax slightly as they start towards Kaytoo and Auren. Cassian exhales a chuckle, shakes his head. “I don’t worry, I know she will.”

Jyn smiles, slightly wider than before. 

They entered the enterprise of childrearing without any idea of what laid ahead of them, neither of them equipped with the sort of childhoods that left them confident they could provide the things a child needed. Cassian had been raised a solider rather than a child.

He hadn’t known, not until the first time Auren had laughed, that he didn’t need to have had that simple joy to want to make her laugh at every possible opportunity. If anything his own memories make the need to give his own children every possible happiness all the more important, is what made the choice to remain on Takodana easy. 

He looks at Jyn, holding Tomax in her arms, and thinks its those very memories that make it possible for her to sit out on a field as Auren and Tomax enjoy fireworks when he knows there’s a part of her that still mourns. 

Kaytoo’s arms are laden with their things by the time they reach him. “I don’t see the point of commemorating today when the Battle of Jakku—” It’s the same every year, Jyn and Cassian could probably recite it from memory now. Auren probably _will_ be able to in a few more years. It feels greedy almost, to imagine so far into the future, years unspooling like loose wire before him, Auren and Tomax growing in front of his eyes, Jyn beside him to share it all. 

Auren looks up at Kay as they walk, listening with rapt attention until little by little her questions slow, interrupted by longer yawns that come closer and closer together. 

“I can walk Papa.” She protests when Cassian picks her up, but she doesn’t fight to be put down. Nowadays when she asks to be carried she likes to drape herself over his back, loop her arms around his neck and hitch her legs around his sides, Cassian gripping her behind her knees as he carries her to his workshop or to the market when they run errands. It isn’t often she wants to be carried like this, convinced its too close to babying. She must be tired now, settles her head on his shoulder and goes lax in his arms, arms going around his shoulders in a loose circle, one hand lightly clutching at his shirt. 

She’s heavy, no matter how small she still is. She’s always felt heavy in his arms, the weight of innocence and possibility so prevalent in her bones and embedded in her skin from the moment Cassian first laid eyes on her. But Cassian has lived a life full of heavy burdens and Auren will never be a burden, no matter how big she gets.

(Cassian has a memory, or the memory of a dream, faint as the last impression of sunlight at dusk. He remembers being taken up in his father’s arms, perhaps for the last time, remembers the rumble of his father’s voice more than he does the sound of it, the rasp of his beard against his forehead. He remembers feeling safe.)

“Next year can we light fireworks?” Auren asks, voice faint, more asleep than awake.

“Maybe.” Cassian says, grinning at Jyn’s raised eyebrow over her shoulder, “We can talk about it tomorrow.” 

Maybe they can teach her how to make a flare. Or Bodhi can send some of those fizzing sparklers he brought with him the year before when he was able to get away from his work. He’d spent the night swearing that if he moved his hand fast enough he could spell his name with light. The sight of Bodhi flailing had proved ridiculous enough to pry a long laugh from Jyn, who came close to dropping her own ignited sparkler into the grass before Baze had warned her.

“Promise?” Auren says, rubbing her cheek against his shoulder like when she was a toddler. 

Home is close, Cassian can see the lights they left illuminated along the walkway leading to their door through the trees that line the way back. 

_Tomorrow and the day after and the day after that_ , Cassian thinks to himself, rubbing at Auren’s back. Her barefoot knocks softly against his thigh. 

“Promise.” 

**Author's Note:**

> I was working on _we are what we become_ and this little snapshot sprang into being. I just want all the soft things for my star children. 
> 
> Also, this is nowhere in this fic because it isn't relevant but Tomax's middle name is Kay. Just putting that out there. They didn't think to give Auren a middle name when they had her but by the time Tomax comes they're on it. Jyn suggests it. Cassian totally cries.
> 
> Title from the song _Until the Morning_ by Charlene Kaye.


End file.
